Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Recently, I wrote an article for Bookology about the writing process as a living story. And that got
me thinking about this blog. I began posting, three days a week, in 2009.
That’s 10 years ago!

In
many ways, it’s a living story too. It’s ongoing, and I have no plans to stop posting
anytime soon. If anyone was crazy enough to read it all the way through, they’d
see how my thinking about nonfiction for children, especially nonfiction
science writing, has evolved over time.

A
quick search of the archive shows that one of the topics I’ve discussed most on
this blog is text structure. Those posts date back all the way to 2009. Back then,
I was just shooting in the dark. I knew structure was a critical element in
nonfiction writing, but I didn’t really know how to think about it or talk
about it in a meaningful way.

My
first meaty posts on the topic were in Fall 2013, and they were explorations of
the grade 3 and 4 Common Core ELA standards about text structure. To say that
Common Core changed and expanded my thinking about nonfiction craft would be an
understatement. Suddenly, it gave me terminology to discuss the challenges I
was facing in my writing. It also gave me a cadre of tools for my writer’s tool
box.

So
while I’m certainly no fan of standardized testing, I LOVE the standards
themselves. They’ve taught me so much about what makes a nonfiction manuscript
outstanding.

And
while I was sorry to see Common Core go the way of the dinosaurs, I’m delighted
that—just like modern birds—something important remains. As we return to a
system in which each state designs and follows its own set of standards, I’m thrilled
to see most states holding onto many of the ideas from Common Core, especially
those related to nonfiction reading and writing.

Thanks
to Common Core, whenever I start thinking about a new book, I have five text
structures to try on for size, and if none of them seems quite right, I’m now
more confident about inventing a new text structure that’s a perfect fit for the
information I want to share and the way I want to present it.

Because
I’m no longer shooting in the dark, my writing process is so, so, SO much more
efficient than it was in the past. While it took me 6 years to figure out how to write No Monkeys, No Chocolate in a way that would
engage young readers, I recently sold a manuscript that took less than a year
to write. I also have other manuscripts that are coming along nicely, so I know
the less-than-a-year manuscript wasn’t a total fluke.

I
think that if upper elementary and middle school students are encouraged to
explore and experiment with various text structures, as I discuss here, by the time they reach high school,
they can reap the same kind of benefits that I have.

Monday, March 18, 2019

Today we continue the Nonfiction Authors Dig Deep series with an essay by Laura Purdie Salas. Thank you, Laura.I'm excited to be back sharing how my own personality
and experiences have influenced my nonfiction writing. I love this growing
awareness among educators, writers, and readers that nonfiction writing is
creative and grows out of the person who writes it.

This spring, I have three new picture books. All three are poetry (and thus, nonfiction).
Two have informational foundations, and one includes nonfiction prose writing.
All three come straight from my heart.

In the
Middle of the Night
I grew up in a house with a basement (a rarity in Florida). A dark, spooky,
creaky-stairs basement with constant noises from pipes and furnaces and other
mysterious things. I spent a lot of time alone in that house, and it never felt
comforting, especially at night. So, writing a collection of cheerful poems
about what happens in our home while we’re asleep comforted me.

Here’s a sample poem from the book:

Overdue-Book Hide-and-Seek

I’m
not in your backpack.

Or
under your bed.

And
you HAVE to find me—

Ms.
Teabottom said!

I
creep to your closet—

I
burrow. I sneak.

I
LOVE to play overdue-book

hide-and-seek!

I love the idea of inanimate objects having their own hidden lives. I am not
the center of the universe, and I think that’s a good lesson for all kids to
learn. If we and our readers can inhabit the “minds” of inanimate objects,
surely we will can feel empathy and respect for other humans and for our world,
right?

Snowman-Cold=Puddle:
Spring Equations
and Riddle-Ku have a lot in common. One shows spring transformations in the form
of equations, and the other features haiku riddles about all four seasons.
Writing both of these books indulged my love of mysteries and riddles.

Though
I was born and raised in Florida, all my sisters and my parents were
Indiana-born. I was always jealous! While growing up, I longed for seasons.
Real seasons that transformed your daily life. Florida didn’t have that.

My
adopted state of Minnesota shows off seasons as varied as anyone could hope
for! I find myself writing about seasons again and again—drawn to celebrating
their beauty and unlocking their mysteries.

In
Snowman-Cold=Puddle:
Spring Equations, I focus on spring and all the changes it brings. I
loved homing in on this season’s transformations and exploring them in both
poetry equations and prose sidebars.

Here’s
a sample from the book:

bushes x blooms =
perfume Lilac
blooms are spring’s perfume. The sweet scent invites insects and birds to
visit. These important visitors track pollen from flower to flower, like
tracking mud from room to room. Humans just enjoy the wonderful smells.

For
Lion
of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons, I thought about some of my favorite
(dandelions, autumn leaves, snow!) and least favorite (mosquitos!) icons of the
four seasons. Then I combined my love of facts and details and mysteries and
riddles to write riddle haiku (riddle-ku) about them. I asked myself, what are
the essential elements of this particular thing? What clues can I give the
reader? This book was such a blast to write!

Here’s
an example:

shhh! here’s my
secret:

soft petals hide
inside me

coming
soon—a bloom

You
know, I have two distinct sides to my personality. On the one hand, I love
facts and flow charts and to-do lists and graphs. I adore analyzing pros and
cons, reverse-engineering processes, and trying to solve mysteries and
problems. On the other hand, I am a poet. I love to use metaphors and
surprising language. Our world fills me with awe, and I find science every bit
as wondrous as magic. These two titles capture both sides of my personality.

As
always, I feel like a reader who learns about the world through my books also
learns about me. And I think that’s pretty cool!

Laura Purdie Salas thought books
appeared by magic when she was little. She read non-stop, but the library had a
bottomless supply of books to feed her hunger. As a children’s author, she
knows there’s a lot of work involved in bringing books to the world—and still
plenty of magic, too!

Laura
is a former 8th-grade English teacher, a former copyeditor (who has nightmares
about errors on menus and signs), and a former magazine editor. She will never
be a former reader. Laura is the author of many poetry and nonfiction books, including
Meet My Family, Water Can Be…, and BookSpeak! You can meet Laura at her
website, laurasalas.com, where you can also access her blog and her e-letter
for educators or learn where to connect with her on social media.

Friday, March 15, 2019

Today, author Heather L. Montgomery discusses three critical elements of writing nonfiction for kids. Thanks for your contribution, Heather.Every writer knows a“Rule of Three.” Fiction writers plan three acts; protagonists go up
against three conflicts; essays include three supporting ideas. But in writing
nonfiction that’s good enough for kids, I’ve found a different three:

(1)A subject full of
“Wait, what!?!” facts

(2)A theme that
resonates deeply within me

(3)A structure that
carries the theme

When considering a project, those magical
three give me the green light to dive in.

A “Wait,
what!?!” SubjectDid you ever read a book like Sarah Albee’s Poison and find yourself spouting facts about murder and medicine
for weeks? That’s the crazy, contagious energy I need before committing years to
a project.

When selecting a subject, I’m tempted to use
curriculum or market trends as a guide, but I can’t afford to. I have to be
selfish. To be a genuine inquiry, a subject has to hyper-excite me.

Sometimes I have a strong theme but finding
the “Wait, what!?!” subject takes a while. Thinking about how tough growing up
was, I wondered if metamorphosis could be a strong theme. But insect metamorphosis
has been done till it’s worn thin.

One day, out in a boat, we hauled up a net of
bizarre creatures. They were juveniles—marine invertebrates on the verge of a
monstrous morphing of their bodies. Wait, what?!? Starfish kids don’t look like
starfish? Junior jellyfish look like plants! And one marine kid surfs on top of
jellyfish! This I couldn’t stop telling
people about.

So I applied the “growing up” theme to the “marine
animals” subject. Fortunately, that all played well with a structure I’d been dying
to try: an inquiry about scientific inquiry. Suddenly I had the magic three.
Out popped Little Monsters of the Ocean:
Metamorphosis Under the Waves.

Universal
ThemeFrom
studying books like Melissa Stewart’s Feathers:
Not Just For Flying, I’d learned that a universal theme touches readers at
a deeper level than straight facts. So I cast about for a way to marry facts
with a universal theme. And that’s when my six-legged friends jumped in to
help.

Finding insect fun facts is easy, but my
passion for insects runs deeper than that. Insects challenge me to think about generosity
(a mother shield bug “shops” till she drops—literally—for the perfect food
for her young), devotion (burying beetles toil endlessly to prepare spit soup
for their kids), and family (tortoise beetles protect their siblings by waving
poo in the air).

Family. That was a universal if surprising connection
we have with some insects —and with one another. Next, I found a structure that
worked (thru-the-day) and a book was born: Bugs
Don’t Hug: Six-Legged Parents and Their Kids.

Supporting
StructureFinding
a structure to support my theme and subject is always a challenge. This is the
deep craft of nonfiction. The kind of thing that, if I think about it directly,
slips away like a fish between my fingers. The kind of thing my subconscious
wrestles with for months, often for years, until I find what works.

I don’t know when I started looking at
roadkill instead of turning away, but one day I realized there could be a book there.

When animals are killed, everyone’s heart
hurts, so nailing a universal theme should be easy. I discovered mind-blowing research
(contagious cancer—that’s right contagious—was discovered thanks to roadkill), so the “Wait, what!?!” was covered.

But, how could I ever, ever approach a topic
this tragic in a book for young people? I was stalled out in fear of my topic.

For years it thrashed about in my mind. Then I
found myself telling stories about my research journey. Each discovery turned me
a few degrees away from tragedy toward awe. Drawn in by people saving animal lives.
That is when I realized I could take my reader with me. The research journey
was the structure I needed to share the hope in Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill.

Heather L. Montgomery writes
for kids who are wild about animals. The weirder, the wackier, the better. An
award-winning science educator, Heather uses yuck appeal to engage young minds.
During school presentations, petrified animal parts and tree guts
inspire reluctant readers and motivate reticent writers. She has published over
a dozen nonfiction books. Heather lives on the border of Alabama and Tennessee.
Inquiry is her life. www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

From an ELA point of view, “research” is something you do to
gather information for a report or project. But if you’re a scientist, research
has a whole different meaning. It’s a way of developing a new understanding of
the world and how it works.

Every once in a while, my husband and I have a conversation
about why two seemingly different pursuits have the same name. So recently, I
decided to do a little, er, research to track down the origin of the word and,
if possible, find a connection.

It turns out that our modern word “research,” traces back to
the Old
French term recercher, which means “seek
out, search closely.” This could apply to both types of research, so I started
looking at all kinds of contemporary definitions. Eventually, I came across
this one, which I like a lot:

“creative
and systemic work undertaken to increase knowledge”

Here’s
a way of thinking about research that encompasses both kinds of research. From
the ELA point of view, an individual increases his or her personal knowledge
about a particular topic. From a scientific point of view, we are increasing
our overall body of knowledge about life, space, Earth, and the physical laws
that explain how everything works.

Another
reason I like this definition so much is that it includes the word “creative.”
In fact, it puts that word right up front.

Doing research for Seashells: More than a Home in Hawaii. Love my job!

Why
is that so important to me? Because that’s what makes research exciting. To me,
gathering research for a book is like a treasure hunt—a quest for tantalizing
tidbits of knowledge. It’s an active, self driven process that requires a whole lot
of creative thinking.

Ideally,
I want my every one of my books to feature fascinating information that no one
else has ever included in a book on the topic. To find that information, I
think creatively about sources.

Who
can I ask?

Where
can I go?

How
can I search in a new or unexpected way?

Unfortunately,
kids often don’t bring that same kind of creative spirit to their research, and
that’s why they often find it boring.

Ideally,
research should employ as many of the five sense as possible.

We
can use our eyes to watch documentary films, observe animals firsthand in the
wild or on webcams, and search archival photographs for clues about the past.

Monday, March 11, 2019

Today we continue the Nonfiction Authors Dig Deep series with an essay by author Jennifer Swanson. Thank you, Jen.For
as long as I can remember, I have always loved science! Curiosity about the
world has fueled my passions throughout my life.

Some
of my earliest memories are examining grass and flowers under a magnifying
glass and climbing trees to see things up close. It only made sense that I
started a science club in my garage when I was 7 years old.

I
was that kid that was always asking questions. “Why does this tree grow so tall but the one next to it doesn’t?” “Why does this flower have five petals but that
one has 50?” “Why does my brother have brown eyes but my eyes are green?”

I
probably drove my parents and teacher nuts with all of my questions. But the
drive to understand how the world works, how everything fits together is deep
inside me. It’s central to both my personal and writing life.

My
quest to discover how things work led me to major in chemistry at the U.S.
Naval Academy, where I also learned engineering and technology. I was hooked! It’s
probably why many of the topics I write about tend toward the “-TEM” part of STEM.

As
I was writing Brain Games: The Mind-Blowing Science of Your Amazing Brain, I wanted to know,
“How does the brain work?”That’s a
simple question, but one with a very complicated answer. So I broke up each
chapter into smaller questions.

How does your brain
think?

How do memories and
emotions work?

How does your brain
make your body move?

For
most people, science is best learned through DOING not just reading, so each
chapter includes awesome activities to that SHOW the reader how their brain
works.

Including activities and experiments in my books comes naturally, too.
It reminds me of my many days as a kid working with the boxed chemistry labs
that I got for my birthdays.

One
of my most recent titles stemmed from a question I had during a conversation
with my editor. We were talking about how astronauts train, and I wondered if
aquanauts train the same way. After all, space and the deep ocean are sort of
similar environments, aren’t they?

WOW!
What a question. I had to find out.

I
dove deep into research (something I love) and the result was Astronaut-Aquanaut: How Space Science and
Sea Science Interact. This is one of my favorite books because it’s the
culmination of my long-held curiosity about both space and the ocean.

My
two childhood heroes were Jacques Cousteau, the famous oceanographer, and Sally
Ride, the first female U.S. astronaut. At certain times in my life, I wanted to
be either or both of them. While writing this book, my research took me UP into
space (like Sally Ride) and DOWN into the ocean (like Jacques Cousteau) as I
learned the most fascinating answers to (almost) all of my questions.

Like
most curious people, I don’t limit myself to certain topics. I ask questions
about pretty much everything. From the emptiness of space and the vast ocean,
to the tiniest of structures that provide us with brand new technology. What am
I talking about? Nanotechnology!

Nanotechnology
is the science of the microscopic. It’s used to create some of the strongest
materials on the planet…and almost every kind of sports equipment you can think
of!

Growing
up in a household of three brothers and a father who loved sports, I succumbed
to the inevitable and ended up playing and loving sports myself. It’s a deep-seated
love born out of many hours of sitting on bleachers watching my brothers’
baseball games, football games, and golf matches. But it’s also the result of my
own experiences running track, swimming, and (trying to) play softball.

My
love of sports and my desire to know how things work merged during the 2008
Olympic Games. When Michael Phelps and his teammates debuted full-body
swimsuits and proceeded to break more than 125 records, I was fascinated. I
wanted to know HOW they did that. Research led me to nanotechnology and the
result was Super Gear: Nanotechnology and
Sports Team Up.

If
you pick up one of my books you will inevitably find that it answers a BIG
question. One that I have about how the world works, one that I hope my readers
have too. As I’m writing, I imagine my 7-year-old self, back with that
microscope in my garage, discovering new and wondrous things. I put that same
sense of accomplishment, the joy of figuring things out into each book I write.

Jennifer Swanson is the award-winning
author of more than 35 nonfiction books for children, including Brain Games (NGKids), Super Gear: Nanotechnology and Sports Team
Up (Charlesbridge), and Geoengineering
Earth's Climate: Re-setting the Thermostat (Lerner), which received a Green
Earth Book Honor Award. She is the creator of the STEM Tuesday blog and has presented at
numerous NSTA conferences and the World Science Festival. Find Jennifer
at http://www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com

Friday, March 8, 2019

In this fascinating interview, award-winning author Sara
Levine shares some of the surprising strategies she used in crafting
her new picture book about how plants send messages to animals.

MS: Your previous books have focused on the comparative
anatomy of bones and teeth. Why did you decide to write about plants?

SL: The idea Flower Talk came from a paragraph in a
textbook I’d inherited for a college course on introductory biology. It
detailed how specific colors of flowers attract specific pollinators—information
that was new and fascinating to me, and, later, equally fascinating to my collegestudents. I thought young readers would be interested
too.

MS: Your previous books employ a combination of
second- and third-person narration, which is quite common for expository
nonfiction picture books. Why did you decide to write this book from a plant’s
point of view?

My
original draft also had a third-person point of view. My editor at Millbrook
Press, Carol Hinz, found the topic interesting, and she was intrigued that it
covered material previously unpublished for kids. But she thought my writing
lacked the playfulness and humor of my previous books.

She
made a surprising suggestion. “It might be going too far to propose that a
flower narrate the book,” she said, “but I’m going to throw that out as one
possibility just to see if it leads you to any other interesting approaches.”

It
did.

It occurred to me
that a plant communicating with animals to get its needs met (i.e., its pollen
moved efficiently) wouldn’t want to waste its time explaining to humans how
this works. So I made my narrator cranky—“Go take a hike. I’m pretty busy in
case you haven’t noticed.”—but in the best way. I modeled him after some of my
favorite older relatives from Brooklyn—cantankerous, funny, slightly off-color
and loving. He’s sort of like Oscar the Grouch.

MS: What were some of the
advantages of having a cranky plant as a narrator?

SL: It allowed me to include a lot
of humor. For example, the narrator (whom illustrator Masha d’Yans aptly chose
to portray as a prickly pear cactus) tells his human readers about all the
false and human-centric ideas we have about flower colors, and then comments,
“What a load of fertilizer!”That’s
probably my favorite line in the book.

I hope readers learn
something new about the relationship between plants and animals from this book,
and I hope that they find it
entertaining as well.

MS: Like your earlier books, this one has an expository
writing style. It provides an explanation rather than telling a story. Do you
consider it fiction or nonfiction?

The book is nonfiction in that it contains
real-life information based on research. But it is told from the point of view
of a plant, and, as far as we know, plants don't talk to us--at least not this
directly, or with Brooklyn accents. So, it uses a fictional device.

Some people characterize books like this,
books with true information relayed by non-human narrators, as "informational
fiction." I don't know that it's so important to put the book into a
category. What is important to me is that readers recognize that the
information given is factual. Hopefully, this will be evident by the way the
book is written and presented.

Sara Levine is an educator, veterinarian,
and award-winning author of seven published or upcoming science books for children. Her honors include the
AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize, Utah Beehive Book Award, Cook Prize finalist,
Monarch Award master list, and Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the
Year. Learn more at http://www.saralevinebooks.com
or follow her @saraclevine

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

For
years, I’ve been trying to gain a deeper understanding of voice and reconcile how
it applies to fiction vs. nonfiction writing. What’s the connection?

At
every writer’s conference I’ve ever attended, editors say they’re looking for
fiction manuscripts with a unique, distinct voice. Whenever attendees ask
exactly what they mean by “voice”, editors shrug their shoulders and say it’s
hard to explain, but they know it when they see it.

Meanwhile,
educators generally describe voice as the “personality of the writing” or “how
they writing makes the reader feel.” These definitions may help us gain a
stronger sense of what voice is, but it doesn’t tell us how to craft it. That’s what writers really need to know.

Not
only does this brilliant explanation apply to voice in both fiction and
nonfiction, it also makes a craft move that often seems so mysterious and
elusive instantly manageable. All three of these text characteristics are easy
to control, easy to vary, easy to play around with.

As
I’ve been saying for years, nonfiction voice options span a continuum from
lively to lyrical, with many choices in between. Writers choose a voice based
on their topic and their purpose for writing.

I’ve
also stressed the importance of word choice and the idea that different
language devices are associated with different voices. For example, repetition
and opposition can make writing more lyrical, whereas puns and onomatopoeia can
make writing more lively.

I’ve
also pointed out that longer sentences with more dependent clauses (and commas)
make writing more lyrical, while sentence fragments and embedded questions are
attributes of a lively voice.

But
Linda Sue’s simple word equations, and the idea that voice really boils down to
a trifecta of text characteristics that are easy to revise and experiment with
is mind blowing. I can’t wait to share this new way of thinking with students
in writing workshops.

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About Me

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 180 nonfiction books for children. Her lifelong fascination with the natural world led her to earn a B.S.
in biology and M.A. in science journalism. When Melissa isn’t writing or speaking to children or educators, she’s usually exploring natural places near her home or around the world.